Tuesday, June 13, 2017

Rarities - European Force Knock Offs - Redux

One of the most popular rarities from 2016 was the write up on European Force.  There's still not much out there on the line and the figures remain incredibly difficult to track down.  But, I've found some more photos and decided to post them as more examples of the line.  It's unfortunate that something so interesting is both incredibly hard to find and also poor initial quality.  It likely lead to many of them being destroyed.  Were these figures slightly more available, they would likely be substantially more popular among collectors.  But, for now, they remain on the fringes of the Joe world.  Beacons for a lucky soul who stumbles upon them.

Below is a group shot.  In the top row from left to right you will see Eclair, Tonnerre, Mirage, Longue Vue x2 and Le Colonel.

In the second row, you have: Acarie, Randon, Thomis x2 and Scorpion x2.  You can see the color difference on Thomis in these two samples.  This is likely discoloration.  But, it's common to see this figure in either shade.  So, there may be a variant.


An additional group shot along with other figures.


Here's another up close view of Le Colonel.  You can see the Mercer head coupled with the other Joe parts.  It doesn't appear that these figures use Hasbro paint masks.  It's likely the creating company produced very generic masks to give the figures color.


Another Scorpion up close picture.  Funskool has make the Caucasian Red Dog head more common.  But, this was the first appearance of such a race change.


Longue Vue is a combo of Flint and Falcon: two figures often confused for each other.


The bright red Randon figure used a lot of Dial Tone.  But, his mustache wasn't painted.  Sadly, this was a trait Hasbro picked up in 2000, too.



Below is the Mirage figure.  Mirage uses Duke's body, but all in black with white highlights.  You will notice this sample has two left arms.  But, that appears to be a function of this piece as others have shown the correct arms.  A Duke all in black should be a collector favorite repaint as it's a not a color that Hasbro used with the mold.  But, the figure's rarity has kept him obscure enough to stay off collector radar.  But, this repaint is a fairly solid design.


Here is another off condition MyGal figure.  The Tarantula is heavily worn.  What's very odd about this figure is that he uses the swivel Buzzer head, but the ball jointed Falcon body.  It looks like they may have altered the Falcon body to accomodate Buzzer's head.  I'd love to get one of these to review to see the construction.



These figures haven't gotten any easier to find.  A few popped up before the 2016 profile.  But, I haven't seen any offered for sale since then.  So, they remain of the great Joe rarities out there.  You will note from the 2016 pictures and these that most, if not all, of the figures are available with variant waists.  So, you have really rare pieces that all have individual variants.  Good luck with that!

4 comments:

  1. The quality on these seem very low, I wouldn't want to collect these even if they were common. Black Duke is interesting, though!

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  2. That Mygal figure at the bottom actually has a Buzzer torso in addition to Buzzer's dome!

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    Replies
    1. That's what I'm seeing, too.

      There were some early 90's knock-offs in the USA that used a swivel neck mod of Footloose's torso. They had straight arms and used COMMANDO heads and came with a random bootleg of 1985-87 JOE weapons.

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  3. I really want to make a custom of Le Colonel. The Mercer head on Flint's body looks super cool.

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